It should be known by now who he has pardoned, a pardon is useless if it is kept secret. So who is enjoying those pardons right now? What kind of people are they? Which one is the most outrageous? Which one is merited? Is even one of his pardons OK?
Same question for commuted sentences.
See this post:
As mentioned you can find the full list here
Lots of rich and influential people, but also many people arrested for minor drug offenses and given long sentences. Also a decent number of people who made a mistake then tried to reform (Good for Trump on pardoning them).
LegalEagle says he pardoned a whole lot of corrupt business people and others who were his “friend,” saying it was the worst set of presidential pardons he’s ever seen–though not as bad as it could have been.
I would not be at all surprised if he has a self-pardon in his pocket, to be revealed when and if needed down the road. If he had any sense, or good legal counsel, it would also be witnessed and dated by a couple of White House staffer(s) since the question would later surely come up as to whether he’d done it while actually still President.
You think a pardon can be kept secret until the pardonee finds it useful? IANAL, but I hope that is not the case. Would seem rather tasteless.
Yes, that is the kind of information I am interested in. It is terrible, but he did not pardon himself, his children or family, Guiliani or the weird guy with the tigers. But he pardoned friends, friends of the family, many people who were in jail for corruption, Manafort, Steve Bannon…
And some were even reasonble. I will have a closer look at those lists further up. That is not something that can be done quickly, but the actual number of pardonees seems rather short to me. I had expected more, specially if he was offered money or other benefits in return.
And Trump doing something tasteless would surprise you because…?
It would not surprise me if Trump did something tasteless, but it would surprise me if it was legal, particularly now that he no longer has immunity. I guess we shall see in due time.
There is no legal requirement that a pardon be publicly reported, as far as I know. It so happens that the White House usually does release a statement about them, though.
Not reporting a pardon would of course only make sense for pre-emptive pardons. I guess there were not that many of those in the past. For people already in jail a pardon should be as well known as possible, specially among the justice department and jail directors and personnel, otherwise it does not work.
Knowing Trump and supposing pardons do not have to be publicly reported I see the danger of him trying to backdate future pardons, perhaps attempting to force people who depend on him to testify that said pardon was signed before Jan. 20 2021 at noon. So I hope that at least the White House Secretary General (if there is such a thing, or the Master Keeper of the Justice Archives or whatever) has the full and definitive list. Otherwise this might become a never ending story.
I found this both interesting and amusing.
I hope Merrick Garland goes for it.
It is nice to see how reliably you can count on some people’s incompetence 
And, who knows, maybe some collaborators in the Justice Department thought it appropiate to sabotage the process a bit. For whatever reasons.
What I found especially delicious is, as I’m sure you know, Andrew Weissmann was Robert Mueller’s top prosecutor in the perverted-by-Barr Russia investigation, and whose righteous convictions of Manafort were overturned by Trump’s inexcusable pardon.
Karma is a lovely bitch.
Thanks a lot for pointing that out, I had not paid attention to the author’s name.
I read today that is called a “pocket pardon”, so it seems to be an existing possibility. Sounds very wrong to me, but who am I to evaluate the laws of a foreign country?
Some higher court like the Supreme Court might still rule the self-pardon of a former president invalid, so this might get interesting and stay so for a while.
Yes, any self-pardon by Trump will inevitably make its way to SCOTUS. I have my doubts that the court, as currently constituted, would take the case. If they like the holding of a lower court, or if there is not a clear or even likely majority to overturn that holding, they just might deny cert.
My own view is that, as outrageous, selfish and morally objectionable as a self-pardon would be, the Constitution does not prohibit it, so it would probably pass legal muster. I’m familiar with the argument, based on English common law, that “no one may be the judge of his own case,” but SCOTUS has for centuries now emphasized the broad sweep of the pardon power and the President’s nearly unlimited discretion in wielding it.
That is what I feared: absurd pardons. Just because tanTrumps lawyer also worked for that drug smugler, he gets pardoned? His supporters must feel great, I hope. Lawn and order and all that…
Considering what he could have done to really hurt his enemies, it is actually good news.